BROCKTON – Mayor Bill Carpenter has several questions in the wake of a 16-year-old student being charged with raping a classmate, but one of his biggest is why someone that age is still in an elementary school.

“I don’t understand how we have a 16-year-old student in a K-8 school,” Carpenter said. “I’ve been a father of an 11-year-old girl, and I wouldn’t want a 16-year-old sitting next to her in the lunch room.”

Carpenter, who as mayor is the chairman of the School Committee, said he plans to address with district officials employing a maximum age policy similar to that at the high school level for middle school grades.

School Superintendent Kathleen Smith could not be reached for comment Thursday.

The student accused of raping a 14-year-old classmate in a wooded area behind the Oscar F. Raymond School is an eighth-grader and has been suspended indefinitely, pending an expulsion hearing, Carpenter said.

Any student accused of crimes of this nature cannot return to school until the student’s case is adjudicated and the outcome decided, according to a Brockton School Department spokesperson.

The boy, who was arrested a week after the alleged incident on March 6, faces one count of rape.

Although violent incidents involving students are not uncommon, they rarely rise to the level of a criminal complaint, said school police Lt. Donald Mills.

“I wouldn’t say this happens often, but it does happen,” he said. “There are kids at that age who may grope another student, and the school counsels the person or the police talk to the parents, and neither parent wants to make it a criminal issue.”

As her children – a Raymond School kindergartner and third-grader – played on the jungle gym in front of the school Thursday afternoon, Laura Bernard reacted to the news.

The 14-year-old victim told police that the incident took place on the pathway near the Gilbert Walker Playground shortly after the 2:35 p.m., dismissal. Both of the students are eighth-graders at the school of 1,075 students.

The incident went unreported for six days, police said, but it was reported March 12. The suspect was arrested at the school by school resource officers the next day.

Mills said authorities are considering having access to the path, which ends on May Street off Main Street, blocked off.

“It’s hard to do, but we’re asking the Parks Department to close it,” he said.